To Lochaber no more: do we support HM Queen Elizabeth II or the direct successor of the Stuarts, HRH Francis, Duke of Bavaria?

The short answer is this:

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is the legitimate monarch of the United Kingdom and all the Commonwealth Realms.

Why?

The best argument is this: common sense.

The true threat to legitimate Catholic monarchy today is most certainly NOT Queen Elizabeth II.

If you don't agree then stop reading now because nothing I nor anyone else says - even God himself - will persuade you.

However, there are many other very good arguments for her legitimacy.

Here are a few:

First, the Stuart line has not made any claim to the throne since the death of HRH the Cardinal Duke of York in 1807. That, on its own, puts an end to the matter.

Secondly, the popes since that time, and even before, recognised the Hanoverians for reasons of state policy and for the safety and security of Europe and what was left of Christendom.

Thirdly, the Cardinal Duke of York himself returned the "Honours of Scotland", the Scottish royal heirlooms which always revert to the Sovereign legally, to King George III which was a tacit recognition of him as his legal successor according to the ancient Scottish (and Gaelic) principle of the Taniste (pronounced "Tawnister") meaning "successor". Under this principle, which was a dynastic principle in most if not all of the Celtic monarchies and principalities, the king could choose a successor from amongst his near kin and his eldest son would only succeed if the king had failed to make such a choice. This law, of course, did not apply to England.

However, in England, Parliament claimed the right to make the king (at least since 1688/9). That law was wholly illegal and Parliament had no right to claim it, especially as it was imposed by foreign occupation when the Dutch invaded us and overthrew the rightful king, but, after remaining in place for over 100 years that was a principle that could not now be overthrown without disproportionate harm and so has had to be endured as a part of the British Constitution ever since. Thus it would now be wrong to seek to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty, nor its heirs or successors.

Fourthly, the Catholic Church teaches that a war, to be just, must be declared by the right authority and no-one now has the right to declare the present dynasty overthrown nor to wage war against it, except, perhaps residually and only in Catholic law not international law, the Pope and he would not now do it as it would be grossly immoral so to disturb a peaceful state and constitution which works, and is working, perfectly well enough for the safety and security of the nation and the people (leaving aside the wicked machinations of some of our more odious politicians).

Fifthly, the Catholic Church also teaches that a war, to be just, must be proportionate and any such attempted overthrow would be utterly disproportionate and thus monstrously unjust and wicked. Indeed, it would be every bit as wicked as the attempt by the evil and Marxist Irish Republican Army to overthrow the state. It was for that reason, among others, that the IRA was several times condemned and its members ex-communicated by the Pope and the Irish bishops.

Sixthly, the Catholic Church favours stability of government - that, after all, is what "peace" is - and that is why it has always favoured legitimate monarchy which, as St Thomas Aquinas and St Robert Bellarmine say, is the best form of government. Now it would be a complete reversal of that principle if one were, at a time when another dynasty has become well-established, to champion the cause of a dynasty that has no prospect of removing the present occupants, does not wish to, and which, if attempted, would be to disturb the peace, safety and security so radically as to threaten the very foundations of the Constitution, the law and monarchy itself.

It would, in short, now be a revolutionary act and the Church utterly opposes revolution which is the greatest threat to any nation's safety and security and which inevitably leads to the persecution, oppression and murder of the innocent. The Church will always ally itself with those governments that are the most peaceful and just, even if that means some sacrifice in terms of legitimacy of monarchy. Peace and Justice are higher goals than legitimacy since legitimacy is seen as a means to the end of attaining such peace and justice because it is more stable than other forms of government. Legitimacy is not purely an end in itself. To choose legitimacy above peace and justice is thus to reverse right order and to sin since, as St Thomas teaches, sin is to desire a good inordinately i.e. outside its right order.

Seventhly, whatever is wrong with our current constitution it cannot be laid at the feet of the Windsor dynasty. Indeed, our Queen has been one of the most exemplary of monarchs that we have ever had the good fortune to see upon the British throne. She has dedicated and devoted herself to the service of her people, the Commonwealth, the Constitution and the best interests of all, without stinting and with much self-sacrifice.

To shew her the kind of ingratitude that is implied in the rejection of her right to sit upon the throne would be an act of the greatest iniquity and baseness and would rightly be viewed as cowardly and deeply criminal. It is the kind of evil ingratitude that utterly false and evil organisations like the IRA demonstrate and is odious in the extreme to all Catholic Christians of good conscience - and, I may add, that excludes all those so-called "Catholics" who think that the IRA have a right to bomb, main, slaughter and destroy innocent men, women and children in open and devilish defiance of the Commandment that says "Thou shalt do no murder". As Bishop Moriarity of County Kerry in Ireland said of their predecessors, the Fenians, "Hell is not hot enough, nor long enough, for such as them".

So, then, you will ask, why do we bother to remember and extol the Stuart dynasty?

That, too, is readily answered.

It is because the dynasty stands not only for legitimate monarchy but also for Catholic monarchy, for Catholic government, for Christian government in accordance with the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for stability, for peace, for justice, for loyalty, for honour, for truth and for a period in our history that is not only deeply romantic but also sets an example for us today and sets the right tone, human weakness notwithstanding, for what Christian monarchy is really about.

Attempts are repeatedly made - alas, not least in Scotland - to besmirch and dishonour the name of the Stuarts and to pretend that they were weak, venal, dishonest, power-hungry, corrupt, villainous, self-serving, incompetent, vain, bigoted, conwardly and so on. But the smears are so ludicrously excessive that they do not reach their mark just as the false accusations against the Templars and the Jesuits were so absurdly excessive that no-one believed them, not even those who might have been disposed to detest the Templars or Jesuits. It is the same with the wildly excessive accusations against the Stuarts.

Part of the reason for these attempts is that the Jacobites, i.e. those who supported the Catholic Stuarts, were largely exiled from Scotland were sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, America and other colonies or else escaped to Europe. That left in Scotland largely those dour, bleak, Calvinists, the Presbyterians, who have a vested interest in besmirching the name of the Stuarts and all they stand for.

The Scottish Episcopalians, among the most loyal of Jacobites, were heavily out-numbered and had to keep a low profile. Many went to America and founded the Episcopalian Church there. Now, they both have simply become yet another of the many liberal Protestant sects who do not really believe in anything much at all and have largely abandoned the historic creeds of Christianity and certainly have abandoned its morality.

In fact, as history reveals, it was the Whigs and Hanoverians who were bigoted and weak and whose government was corrupt. England was never so badly governed as it was by them, as the Protestant William Cobbett, who lived at the time, so graphically reveals.

It was they and their evil example that lost the American Colonies; they who tolerated the supremacy of the "jobbers" in the City of London that led to the South Sea Bubble, and the placemen in government who let corruption and anarchy reign in so many places so that the poor were never so destitute. They, too, were those who introduced transportation to the Colonies and over 200 capital offences, including death for stealing 6d or a sheep; they who widened and extended the most vicious and offensive Penal Code against Catholics ever to be seen so that English and Irish Catholics were reduced to the status of starved slaves in their own country.

The Stuarts stood for everything opposed to such monstrous corruption. The Catholic King James II and VII was even in favour of religious toleration within reasonable bounds. Indeed, it was for THAT reason and no other than he was treacherously betrayed by those who should have been most loyal to him and who sided with the Durch invader, William of Orange, and, indeed, actually INVITED the Duchman to invade, the most open and clear act of High Treason imaginable. Yet these same bare-faced, hypocritical pharisees falsely and unjustly dared to call Catholics by the odious and shameful name of "traitors" and to hang, draw and quarter them with the most savage and brutal torture imaginable - all simply to preserve the ill-gotten plunder of the Whigs!

James II ordered his Declaration of Indulgence to be read from every pulpit in the land (which was the "media" of its day) but the refusal of 7 Anglican Whig bishops so to do, and their subsequent trial, precipitated the plotting of High Treason against the King. In the Declaration, Catholics and dissenters were freed from the savage penalties against them and allowed to participate in the professions, the Armed Forces and the public life of the state, to some degree.

Read the Declaration here and judge for yourself:

http://www.jacobite.ca/documents/16870404.htm

The Whig Anglicans, whose ancestors had enriched themselves from the plunder of the monasteries, the system of welfare for the poor, feared that even this small measure of toleration might lead to them having to account for their ill-gotten gains and - absurdly and irrationally - they feared that it might lead to a Catholic government which might make them give back some of their plunder and robbery to the Church. They feared this even though the Catholic Queen Mary (Tudor) had found it impractical to order more than a small part of the plunder restored. But even this very little the villainous Whigs feared!

This was the REAL fear of those worthless scoundrels, the Whigs.

They feared for their grotesquely bloated wallets, their chests of booty, their fabulous houses and wealth, their sacks of gold. These Whigs were the original fat, bloated Capitalist exploiters and, like all thieves and robbers, they fought hardest and most energetically against those who would require them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains and return some to the public purse and to relieve the poor.

Instead, they conspired to oust the legitimate government, to which they owed allegiance, and, through the agency of the Parliament which they so totally controlled, they set up a puppet government with a king - William of Orange - who was entirely in thrall to them, so that they could secure to themselves fabulous wealth and riches, undisturbed by the famished cry of the starving children of the poor.

Was there ever men so evil as these?!

We remember the Stuarts as being the dynasty that set itself against these plundering rogues, the Whigs, and sought to govern for the good of the people as a whole, and not for one small section of the people.

The Whigs will tell you that the opposite is true but one need but read history to see what liars they are.

The Whigs claim that their revolution of 1688/9 was for "liberty" - but liberty for whom? It was liberty for them to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, in truth.

Even as late as 1988, the late Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, a former Lord Chancellor, sought to celebrate 300 years of that Whig revolution as a celebration of our "ancient liberties". It was no such thing. It was the very opposite. It was a denial of our ancient liberties and the settlement of liberty upon the rich to exploit the poor.

The years after 1688 were the years which Hogarth so aptly illustrates with his paintings and drawings of the idle corruption of the rich, the sloth of government and the complete destitution of the poor. One such has a caption "Drunk 1d, dead drunk 2d". This was the time when rich and poor alike went to Tyburn to see many hanged and half-hanged and turned the whole ghastly event into a kind of Christmas fair!

This was why the Whigs felt the need to promote "No Popery" riots whenever there was public discontent with the government. It was a devious, cynical means of deflecting attention from the true source of corruption, i.e. themselves, onto entirely innocent but convenient scapegoats, the Catholics.

The evidence for this is Cobbett himself - a Protestant but a very fair and honest one. Read his book The History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland to see all revealed. And Cobbett was an MP and journalist whop suffered unjust imprisonment for telling the truth about the corruption in British society of his time.

When the Whigs, and their predecessors the Cromwellite Roundheads, speak of "the people" they mean themsleves only. When they speak of "the consent of the governed" they mean only the consent of themselves. When they speak of liberty, they mean liberty only for themselves. And when they speak of "arbitrary government" and "Popish government" they mean a government that will stop them from exploiting, oppressing, persecuting, starving and slaughtering the people and which will stop them enriching and bloating themselves with wealth that once was used to succour the poor and sick.

As Dr Johnson once aptly wrote: "The Devil was the first Whig".

We remember the Stuarts as the dynasty that stood apart and above these evils and, instead, stood to defend the true liberties of the people from the depradations of a parcel of Whig plutocrats and exploiters who cared not a whit for the liberties of the ordinary people.

And we remember that these same Stuarts were, from James II onward, loyal and devout Catholics who looked to the principles of the Gospel to guide their government and to honour, loyalty, chivalry and protection of the weak, and all the virtues as the things at which kings must aim, not mere filthy lucre and self-aggrandisement.

And we remember that they were the legitimate monarchs against whom the treacherous Whigs disloyally and shamefully refused allegiance and, instead, declared treasonous war.

For this reason, too, we honour their descendants, the Wittelsbachs and Liechtensteins, also fine examples of good, modern, Catholic monarchy and dynastic rule.

His Serene Highness, Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein and his wife, Her Royal Highness, Princess Sophie of Liechtenstein and Duchess in Bavaria, through whom the Stuart line now passes.

We remember the motto of the Stuarts for the same reason:

Aymez Loyaute - love loyalty.

All true Christians love loyalty and hate disloyalty just as they hunger and thirst after justice, peace and mercy and hate injustice, war and the hard-hearted mercilessness of corrupt and selfish men.

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